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FEMA announced that the agency is
conducting the 2018
National Level Exercise for the whole community, inviting government
agencies, private sector and non-profit organizations, and individuals to
participate in the biennial exercise. The exercise, taking place April 30 – May
11, 2018, represents a key step towards implementing FEMA’s recently released 2018-2022 Strategic Plan.
The 2018 National Level Exercise tests federal, state, and
local governments’ ability to respond to catastrophic incidents; Maryland,
Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia and the District of Columbia
will join departments and agencies across the federal government for this
exercise. The exercise is based on a mid-Atlantic hurricane scenario, where a
major hurricane makes landfall near Hampton Roads, Virginia, causing severe
damage to homes and businesses. The scenario will include power outages and
cascading effects to critical infrastructure systems, including impacts to
communications, transportation, water, wastewater and hospitals.
The 2018 Exercise will test lessons learned from the
unprecedented 2017 Hurricane Season. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria tested
local, tribal, territorial, state and federal disaster readiness like no season
has before, and incorporating those lessons into this exercise will help
enhance disaster readiness, both for the agency, and the nation.
It’s important that individuals and families living in an
area potentially vulnerable to hurricanes understand their risk, develop a
preparedness plan, and take action. This exercise provides an opportunity for
individuals to join with FEMA and prepare
for the 2018 hurricane season.
This exercise also represents ongoing engagement with the
private sector and infrastructure to test our coordination through all levels
of government in exercise play, from engagement with the National
Business Emergency Operations Center (NBEOC), to the regional level with FEMA
Region III’s Regional Business Emergency Operations Center (RBEOC), and the
state level with our state partners’ State Business Emergency Operations
Centers. The private sector plays an invaluable role in helping communities
respond to and recover from disasters, and this exercise empowers FEMA to work
closely with those organizations and strengthen our partnerships for future
events.
The 2018 National Level Exercise is the first exercise of
its kind following the release of FEMA’s 2018-2022 Strategic Plan. The exercise
supports the three goals of the Strategic Plan: build a culture of
preparedness, increase readiness for potential catastrophic events, and reduce
the complexity of FEMA.
By congressional mandate, the National Level Exercise
represents the culmination of the two-year National
Exercise Program cycle, and is designed to educate and prepare participants
for potential catastrophic events.
For more information, visit www.fema.gov/nle.
Americans at all income levels have experienced the challenges
of rebuilding their lives after a disaster or emergency. In these stressful
circumstances, having access to financial, insurance, medical, and other
records is crucial for starting the process of recovery quickly and
efficiently. Emergency savings can also help individuals and families quickly
start on the road to recovery.
Because financial wellness is so critical to building a culture
of preparedness, FEMA, in partnership with the U.S. Treasury and the Financial
Literacy and Education Commission (FLEC), will work throughout April to help
individuals and families prepare for the financial cost of unexpected
emergencies.
Throughout the month, Financial
Literacy and Education Commission members
will encourage financial preparedness in three key areas: Planning,
Savings, Insurance. Use #FinancialFuture2018 on social media to join in and
learn more.
Please consider
joining the following:
- April
11: 1 p.m. ET: National Financial Capability Month Twitter Chat
#FinancialChat with @Prepareathon. Learn and share ways to prepare for your
financial future.
- April
18: 3 p.m. ET: Facebook
Live - Improving Your Financial Future
Find out more by following #FinancialFuture2018, and
visiting www.ready.gov/financial-preparedness and www.usa.gov/flec.
This
year, FEMA is continuing its practice of strengthening the
financial framework of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) by transferring
risk to the private sector. In early January 2018, FEMA secured $1.46 billion in reinsurance from 28 reinsurance companies to
cover any qualifying flood losses in excess of $4 billion per event occurring
in calendar year 2018. FEMA plans to
transfer additional risk by engaging the capital markets for the first time
through an insurance-linked securities (ILS) transaction on or about July 1,
2018.
Adding
this new “building block” will enable FEMA to transfer risk through two avenues
– the traditional reinsurance markets and the capital markets. Engaging both
markets will create more competition and reduce the NFIP’s risk transfer costs.
It will also enable FEMA to access greater market capacity and spread its risk
across a more diverse pool of companies and investors.
FEMA
recently published a public notice of its intent to pursue the mid-year ILS
transaction. The official notice can be found at www.fema.gov/nfip-reinsurance-program. It advises potential
reinsurer partners to contact FEMA (via email addresses provided in the notice)
by April 6, 2018, to indicate interest in participating and receive additional
information.
FEMA,
in partnership with organizations that collectively represent the emergency
management profession, released today the eighth video presentation from the
inaugural PrepTalks Symposium, Amanda Ripley’s “The Unthinkable: Lessons from
Survivors.”
In her PrepTalk, Ripley combines the inspiring stories of disaster
survivors with research into how the brain works when confronted with unusual
events. Ripley provides
advice on steps emergency managers can take now to help individuals be more
decisive in emergencies.
Ripley is a journalist
and senior fellow at the Emerson Collective. She writes about disasters,
education, and human behavior. Her bestselling book, “The Unthinkable: Who
Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why,” has been published in 15 countries
and, a documentary based on the book aired on the Public Broadcasting System in
2012.
Ripley’s
presentation, the question-and-answer session that followed, a discussion
guide, and additional reference materials are
available at https://www.fema.gov/preptalks. This is the final video of eight produced from the PrepTalks
Symposium held in Washington, D.C. in January 2018. The
next PrepTalks Symposium is scheduled for fall of 2018.
PrepTalks are a
partnership between FEMA, the International Association of Emergency Managers,
the National Emergency Management Association, the National Homeland Security
Consortium, and the Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and
Security.
The Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) hosted its annual Tribal
Nations Training Week on March 19-23 at its campus in Anniston, Alabama. More than 157 tribal
students represented 54 different tribal agencies, spanning 21 states
participated in the annual event. They were enrolled in nine CDP training
courses and five partner training courses that focused on enhancing their and
their communities’ emergency response capabilities.
The week included training in a wide range of emergency
response subjects, from biological incident awareness and medical emergency response
to incident command, culminating with an integrated capstone event where the students
exercised an interdisciplinary response to a mass casualty incident.
The week also included a number of evening lectures,
including one which explained the numbers and types of voluntary organizations that
are typically active in a disaster, and one specifically on FEMA Grants. It
also included presentations by a number of CDP training partners, including the
Emergency Management Institute, National Center for Biomedical Research
and Training, National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center, Nevada
Test Site’s Counter Terrorism Operations Support Program, Rural Domestic
Preparedness Consortium, Transportation Technology Center, Inc./Security and
Emergency Response Training Center, and the National Disaster Preparedness
Training Center at the University of Hawaii. Representatives from FEMA Tribal
Affairs and tribal liaisons from FEMA Regions IV and IX were on hand throughout
the five-day event, which was the third Tribal Nations Training Week hosted by
the center.
The CDP is forming a working group that it will chair and which will
include its training partners, to plan and execute the 4th annual Tribal
Nations Training Week. The CDP will also schedule a focus group in the coming
weeks with participants of this event to start framing the next Tribal Nations
Training Week.
Thus far in Fiscal Year 2018, the CDP has hosted 235 tribal nations students in
resident training for a total of 391 course completions.
As
previously announced on
September 29, 2017,
key changes being made to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) on April
1, 2018 include updated insurance policy premium increases conforming to the
premium rate caps established by Congress.
Premiums
increased from an estimated average of $866 per policy to $935, for an average
increase of 8.0 percent. Premiums did
not include the HFIAA surcharge or the Federal Policy Fee (FPF). When the HFIAA
surcharge and FPF were included, the average total amount billed to the
policyholder increased from $994 to $1,062, for an average increase of 6.9
percent.
Additional
changes for April 1 were minimal increases to Increased Cost of Compliance
(ICC) premiums. FEMA is now allowing a
policyholder and a policyholder’s spouse to benefit from the lower HFIAA
surcharge when they each reside in a separate primary residence more than 50
percent of the year.
This
week, FEMA announced program changes that
will take effect on October 1, 2018 and impact individual policyholders as
their policies renew. These include:
- Allowing policyholders who purchase a
private flood insurance policy to cancel their duplicate NFIP policy
- Requiring NFIP insurers to notify
certain policyholders of a lower-cost premium option
- Extending the eligibility for the
Newly Mapped procedure rating option
For
more technical information regarding these rate increases and program changes,
please visit: https://nfip-iservice.com/nfip_docs.html.
2018 National Preparedness Symposium Promoting Whole Community Preparedness Through Unity of Effort
FEMA's Emergency
Management Institute (EMI) will host the 2018 National Preparedness Symposium
from May 21-24 at the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Maryland. The symposium provides federal, state, tribal, territorial, and
nongovernmental training and exercise officials the opportunity to discuss
current and future training and exercise programs and to share case studies,
lessons-learned, and smart practices. The theme is “promoting whole community
preparedness through unity of effort,” with a focus on promoting a culture of
preparedness in America.
Applications for registration must be received by
April 9, 2018. To apply and for more information, visit https://training.fema.gov/nationalpreparednesssymposium/
or contact the EMI National Training Liaison Dan Lubman at daniel.lubman@fema.dhs.gov.
Staffing for Adequate and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grants Application Period
The application period for the Fiscal Year 2017 Staffing for Adequate Fire and
Emergency Response (SAFER) Grants is open, with $345
million in funding available to enhance the ability of recipients
to attain and maintain 24-hour fire department staffing and to assure that
their communities have adequate protection from fire and fire-related hazards. Applications
are being accepted through 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, April 27, 2018.
Volunteer, career, and combination fire departments
are eligible to apply under the Hiring of Firefighters. Municipalities and fire
districts may submit applications on behalf of fire departments when the fire
department lacks the legal status to do so, e.g., when the fire department
falls within the auspices of the municipality or district. Eligibility for Recruitment
and Retention of Firefighters funding is limited to volunteer and
combination fire departments. National, state, local, or tribal organizations
representing the interests of volunteer firefighters and individual fire
departments (volunteer or combination) may apply for assistance for regional
projects.
Property Acquisition Open Space Collection Comment Period
FEMA recently listed a Federal Register Notice
for public comments about information collection. In accordance with the
Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice seeks comments concerning the
process of property acquisition and relocation for open space as part of FEMA's
mitigation grant programs, monitoring requirements after a receiving a grant,
and a direct grant to property owners for acquisition and demolition of severe
repetitive loss structures. Comments may be submitted through the Federal
Register at www.federalregister.gov/d/2018-03949 until April 30, 2018.
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